Veggie Rejections?

hummersteveMarch 4, 2014

Does anyone find that there are veggies that worms just wont eat ? Maybe something that may have a bitter taste or similar sensation. I have read [dont know if its true] that a steady diet of greens will fatten your worms.

The person who gave me a bucket of worms to start vemicomposting years ago stated onions were the favorite food of his herd. His wormbed was huge, and he dumped scraps from his bakery/restaurant on it daily.

I have not had an onion or other veggie rejection. Kelp, however, took a long time to disappear.

Coffee grounds aren't veggies, but it always amazes me when wormers rave about how much their worms love coffee grounds. I don't even know how anyone can see the grounds in the bins.

Right from the beginning, I never felt my worms cared for coffee grounds. Just as further proof to my thoughts I put a filter of used grounds in the corner of the bin, to see if anyone migrated for a taste. Nope, nada. not a lad in the least bit interested. So I dumped it out of the filter and tore the filter into shreds. So I don't get excited about saving the grounds for the lads, they don't care.

I find clusters of worms under where I dump the morning coffee grounds. Not right away, days later, but they seem to like them. Just today, in case things were getting a bit too acidic, I sprinkled a very light dusting of powdered eggshells over the surface and lightly scratched it in.

My worms totally reject potato peelings, which surprised me. Some were in there so long that apparently even the other micro-critters that live there feel the same! I have not tried onion scraps since I read somewhere worms don't like them, and never put citrus in.

They do love tomatoes, but evidently do not eat the seeds. I have learnedto add only cooked tomato stuff after one canning season when I ended up with a veritable jungle of tomato seedlings in the bins. For 2 years seedlings kept popping up in my houseplants since when repotting those I add a little vermicompost to the mix. LOL

This forum could probably contain books of he likes but she hates. Personally I am finding that there are some things that will disappear in a heart beat and other things lay wasting away. I also find that different bins of worms feed in a variety of ways. I can't get coffee grounds scraped into the bin fast enough for mine but they sling pasta back at me with a vicious snarl. I guess the worms do have taste buds of some kind or another. I puree my stuff in the Nutri Bullet which helps the worms chow down easier.

Part of it is the way it is prepared prior to feeding. Onion peels, potato peels, carrots and citrus all went quickly when I ground them up first and mixed them with other foods. Even banana stems would decompose if ground first. But whole rotten potatoes also decomposed faster than one would expect. I couldn't get myself to put them through the grinder.

I have a big mouth juicer which works well and I put everything in it that I have saved till Im ready to juice. I usually do the fruit first , drink the juice. By saving and then giving to them quickly had the bacteria breaking it down. I usually always cut out banana stems but maybe I could ground up the stems as they would take forever if touched at all.